Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Flesh Gordon (1974)

Although it’s not the
out-and-out porn film its reputation might suggest, Flesh Gordon is a cheerfully filthy spoof of the old Flash Gordon movie serials—the picture
tries to blend satire with titillation by bombarding viewers with crude jokes,
nudity, and sex scenes. The movie is quite awful, of course, but it moves along
at a breakneck speed and, in its best moments, approaches an anything-goes
party vibe that suggests a low-rent version of the comedy style perfected a few
years later by the makers of Airplane!
(1980). Obviously, the big difference is that the makers of Airplane! had real actors and a real
budget, to say nothing of the fact that the Airplane!
team didn’t have to interrupt their movie periodically for lingering close-ups
of genitalia.

The plot of Flesh Gordon
is adapted from the first Flash Gordon
serial, released in 1938 and starring Buster Crabbe. (Another version of the
very same plot was employed for the big-budget Flash Gordon movie released in 1980.) When Earth is bombarded by a
sex ray from outer space, which drives victims to uncontrolled lust, dashing
adventurer Flesh Gordon (Jason Williams), his new girlfriend Dale Ardor
(Suzanne Fields), and kooky scientist Dr. Flexi Jerkoff (Joseph Hudgins) fly into
space to find the source of the sex ray and save the Earth. Arriving on the
planet Porno, the heroes battle minions of evil Emperor Wang the Perverted
(William Dennis Hunt), along the way encountering monsters and other fantastic
creatures. This being a sex comedy, those fantastic creatures include the
flamboyantly gay prince (Lance Larsen) of a men-in-tights troupe and the
Amazonian leader (Candy Samples) of a lesbian cult.

Ninety-nine percent of the
jokes in Flesh Gordon are painfully
stupid, the performances are terrible, and the editing is so choppy that some
scenes appear as if from nowhere. However, writer/co-director Michael
Benveniste and his collaborators cleverly shield themselves from legitimate
criticism by framing the movie as a campy goof—the worse the acting gets, the
better. Yet some aspects of the picture run perilously close to real filmmaking.
For instance, the flick includes several elaborate scenes of stop-motion
animation fused with live-action, leading to Harryhausen-style scenes of real
actors fighting stop-motion monsters. This stuff is executed fairly well, given
the budget constraints.

That said, the way Flesh
Gordon devotes long stretches of screen time to pure adventure would seem
sure to infuriate the heavy-breathing crowd more interested in Flesh than Gordon. But then again, that’s why Flesh Gordon is so peculiar—it’s a kiddie movie for pervs. Consider
this amusingly infantile chant, delivered by bottomless cheerleaders (!) in
Wang’s palace: “Emperor Wang is the one for me—without him, the planet Porno
would be ever so forlorn-o.” Or consider the very strange finale, which
involves a giant, cloven-hooved monster who chases after the heroes while
speaking in smooth, lounge-lizard patter. (Craig T. Nelson, the only familiar actor
involved with the project, voices the monster in one of his earliest film
performances, though he’s not credited.)

FYI, there are
two versions of Flesh Gordon in
circulation. The original 78-minute version carried an X-rating, even though
it’s not hardcore, and the 90-minute version available on home video is
unrated. In the 90-minute version, the only full-on porn action involves a few extras
making out on the periphery of crowd shots. Oh, and one more thing: Howard Ziehm, who
co-directed and co-produced Flesh Gordon,
resuscitated the character by directing a 1989 sequel, Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders, with an almost entirely
new cast. Suffice to say the picture was not well received.